


Betwixt

by SingingInTheStairwell



Category: omgcheckplease
Genre: Gen, Minor Original Character(s), No Sex, some language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 08:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13994892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheStairwell/pseuds/SingingInTheStairwell
Summary: Ransom gets sucked into a video game. Holster has to save him.





	Betwixt

Ransom leaned his head against the bus window, feeling every bump in the road on his temple. The roadie had been a brutal one, and although every teammate had been giving their all, they just hadn’t managed to eke out a win. Passes hadn’t connected, plays hadn’t come together, and there were a lot of sore ribs, not to mention bruised egos. Holster leaned against his shoulder dejectedly, too steady to be asleep but completely silent. Ransom was dissecting every moment in his head over and over, imagining how it could have gone differently, when he realized he really just needed to get out of his head for a while. He slid his leg under the seat to hook his bag and bring it up without disturbing the unmoving Holster still unnaturally quiet on his shoulder.  
As Ransom pulled out his old battered DS and flipped it open, Holster let out a small huff of air that might have been a laugh. The game that was still stumping him years after buying it, Betwixt, was always a good way to unwind, if a bit frustrating after a few hours of not getting anywhere. The level of detail and amount of space in the game world was unheard of for the age of the game. Ransom slid down in his seat trying to find room for his long legs to be slightly less cramped, and Holster adjusted without comment.  
As Ransom heard the familiar starting music of the game, Holster finally started breathing deeply. 

~

Holster jolts awake when the shoulder he was resting on is suddenly gone. He is more shocked than the situation might warrant but he knows that usually even in his sleep he tends to somehow know what Ransom is about to do. But Ransom hasn’t just shifted away in his seat. Ransom is not there at all. This should be impossible since he had the window seat, and there isn’t exactly much room for anyone to maneuver. Bitty could have slid out without waking Holster, but Ransom definitely could not have. Holster feels ridiculous but is starting to worry anyway. He stands up and looks around the bus. Everyone is asleep except for Shitty, who is scrolling on his phone. Shitty is in the window seat, Jack somehow managing to sleep neatly and entirely upright in the aisle seat next to him. He has one of those neck pillows.  
“Shitty! Have you seen Rans?”  
Shitty doesn’t hear him. Holster sees that Shitty is wearing headphones and curses to himself. He walks over and reaches across Jack to poke Shitty. Shitty is ridiculously startled by the poke and yelps loudly, waking up several people nearby. After Holster explains what he’s worried about, Shitty asks him if he’s checked the bathroom yet. Holster feels like an idiot. The bus they’ve been riding has one of those little gross porta potty style closet bathrooms. He hurries down the aisle to knock on the bathroom door, then hesitates. He still suspects that he’s being ridiculous, but he has a bad feeling. When the bathroom creaks open under his hand and no one is inside, the pit in his stomach feels heavier. Where is he? Holster has gotten used to having a vague awareness of Ransom at all times, and can find him anywhere in the Haus on one try. But … if he had to say where he felt Ransom was right now, he’d say he was still in his seat. Holster glances over again as if Ransom is going to magically appear in his seat again. Nothing.  
Holster pulls out his phone and calls Ransom, feeling the panic really start to take hold. He hears Ransom’s ringtone start up from their seat, and walks over. Ransom’s phone is shoved into the outside pocket of his bag, merrily playing Soul Provider by Michael Bolton, which is Ransom’s ringtone specifically for Holster. Usually it makes Holster laugh but right now it brings a lump to his throat. He notices a glow on the seat hidden by the blanket they’d been sharing and pushes it to the side. Ransom’s sticker covered DS is lying underneath it, still running a game. Holster picks it up and almost turns it off, but that same feeling stops him. He looks closer. There’s a character on the screen, and it’s moving. 

~

Ransom remembers focusing harder on the game than he ever has before, trying to drive the disastrous roadie out of his mind. He’d swept through the dungeon, and made it to the boss with nearly full health and a respectable amount of potions. A game creature had tried to follow him around for a while but he had no patience for side quests and shooed her away with a quick spell. The fight with the final boss had taken all of his concentration, requiring him to switch items and alternate between spells, magic arrows, and sword attacks. He’d gotten more and more excited as the battle went on, finally reaching the final transformation of the boss. The boss had split into two beings with giant dragonfly wings and muscular humanoid bodies, the name Gemini written across the screen. A prompt on the bottom of the screen warned him: Kill the purple one first and he’d win the game. Kill the green one first and he’d win a chance to play for real. Ranson was not the kind of person to bother reading the words though, not tonight. He was here for the action. He impatiently clicked the A button until the words vanished and the fight began. He killed the green one first.  
As soon as the green boss exploded in a shower of pixels, Ransom began to feel a curious sensation, as if he was a tissue being tugged from a box. The pull was light, almost playful, but he felt stretched. He couldn’t seem to feel the seat under him anymore, or the warmth of Holster’s breath on his shoulder, or the slight chill of the air. The victory music playing in the game suddenly seemed to be all around him, and it was a lot warmer. Suddenly everything around him came into focus, and nothing made sense. 

~

Holster squints at the screen until the pixels are blurred together, then tilts his head another way, but the image on the screen is still there. The character in the game looks exactly like Ransom. A Ransom wearing a tunic, a pair of jewel hilted dirks, and a bow. A Ransom that is just spinning in circles with an astounded look on his face somewhere between fear, awe, and disbelief. He’s in the ruins of a desert palace, windows broken open to sky and sand. Golden statues and piles of coins litter the floor, and as Ransom spins they disappear and numbers appear over his head with clinking sounds. There’s a large chest sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by torches with an eerie green glow. When Ransom finally stops gaping about he heads uncertainly towards the chest, his boots sliding in the sand. As soon as he passes the torches, they flare from green to purple, and words appear above his head. 

Three days you have no more no less,  
To find your way from this mess.  
If you fail to win free,  
your heart and soul belong to me.  
You cannot win this fight alone  
What will they give to bring you home?

The chest creaks open and the purple dragonfly creature flies out of it, swooping around Ransom before vanishing with a cackle. The name Drazaan flashes across the screen underneath it.  
Holster drops the DS with a clatter, then dives after it and scoops it up again inspecting it for damage. If this is really what it seems to be (and his gut tells him that it is), there’s no telling what would happen to Ransom if the system is destroyed, or even turned off. While scrambling for the game, Holster accidentally presses the start button. A menu comes up and Holster searches frantically through it before finding the option, Add Player Two? Holster chooses Yes without even thinking about it, and a character that looks remarkably like Holster appears beside Ransom, who it still examining the chest and the torches as though something else might jump out. When Ransom’s character’s mouth opens, words appear in type on the screen.  
-What the F#@% is F*&%$#@% going on here? How are you here too?-  
Holster writes on the bottom screen with the stylus, hoping like hell this works.  
-I have even less of an idea than you do! What happened, bro? You vanished! I’m just playing the game from the outside, I’m not really here.-  
-This would be like, really swawesome if it wasn’t terrifying, bro,- Ransom replied. -Also your handwriting sucks.-  
Holster snorts out a laugh despite himself. Only Ransom would find a way to chirp him in this kind of situation.  
-What do we do??- Holster scrawls frantically.  
-We’re in his game. I guess we have to play by his rules for now. Or I do, anyway. Let’s start by looking for that door. Let’s not think about what happens if we don’t find it.- 

~

Ransom isn’t sure if this is a dream or not. He has that weird feeling he gets during lucid dreaming that it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a dream, that whatever happens here will affect him anyway. He should be panicking, but he can’t get over how cool this is, that he’s really here, in another world. A world with deserts, and no ice. Okay, maybe not so cool. Cool. Heh, Pun. No. Focus. He’s been just rotating in circles staring at the ruins around him long enough that it should have made him quite dizzy, but he’s fine. Point one for dream. He’d noticed the odd clinking sounds happening as he spun but the numbers above his head startle him when he looks up. Ooh that’s a lot of gold.  
Ransom looks around with actual purpose instead of in blank awe and finally notices the large chest sitting in the dead center of the room flanked by green flamed torches. It screams Boss Prize at his gamer instincts almost as loudly as it screams Trap. He doesn’t see a way out of the room, or anything else of note in it, so he approaches the chest anyway, hands flexing nervously. He knows that he’s wearing the same weapons his character’d had; the dirks and the bow. He kinda wishes he’d opted for the broadsword and the shield instead of the flashier dual wield, because having a shield would feel very good right now. He’s tempted to draw one of the dirks before opening the chest, but as soon as he passes the first torches the game’s unlocking melody plays, and the chest creaks open. The ominous verse above his head and the impossibly large insect humanoid whirling from the box like a genie from a bottle put a big dent in his shock, and he’s well on his way into a brain overload when Holster appears out of thin air, in the simple smock that the protagonist of the game always starts with. Because of course he does. If anyone could find him when he’s somehow been sucked into a video game it would be him.  
Except when Ransom tries to talk to him, Holster can’t reply with his voice. Instead after a delay glowing words scrawled in sloppy letters appear in front of Ransom. They’re barely legible.  
“Man, I thought I was the one planning to be a doctor,” Ransom chirped, then reminded himself to be careful. In this situation he couldn’t see Holster’s expressions and would have no idea if he hurt his feelings. This thought was interrupted by ominous music starting up in the background, immediately putting Ransom on the alert.  
-Should I save?- Holster scrawled as they peered around for the source of the danger. Ransom considered.  
“I don’t know, what if you save and it means I’m stuck here?”  
-Shit your battery’s almost dead!-  
Holster’s character goes still as he presumably begins a mad scramble for the charger. Ransom honestly can’t remember if he even brought it, but he can’t worry about that now, because a horde of sand demons have erupted from the floor around the torches, which is a lot more terrifying when you are actually in that situation. Fortunately Ransom is still standing on the stone platform that the chest rests on, so nothing comes out right by his feet. If he was playing normally instead of actually here he’d use the bow and pick a few off before they get too close, but he doesn’t know how long it’ll take him to switch weapons (probably longer than the quick press of the Z button) and doesn’t want to risk getting caught in close range without the blades out. He fumbles on the draw costing him precious time. The weight of the blades startles him and he’s suddenly very glad he hadn’t gone with the broadsword which would have been twice as heavy, ungainly as hell and he still would have had to swing it one handed.  
One of the demons lunges at Holster’s still form and Ransom charges without thinking. He redirects the blow from the massive morningstar mace with his right dirk, and jabs at the opening left under the demon’s momentarily trapped arms. It disappears with a howl and Ransom whirls, remembering that there were more. Holster suddenly starts moving again and Ransom yells,  
“Man you can’t do anything you’ve got no weapons. Just stay out of the way!”  
-Hang in there, I’m going to buy some in the menu,- Holster replies, thankfully not arguing. More sand demons are digging out of the floor and Ransom is pulling Holster’s unmoving body towards the center of the platform, pushing him into a crouch near the chest. Random items start appearing on Holster as he presumably spends all of Ransom’s gold, but Ransom is more concerned with the crowd of advancing sand demons.  
As Ransom crouches a bit and prepares for the battle, sand demon howls start coming from the rear of the pack, accompanied by flares of light. Ransom is busy fending off a few demons at once, so he can’t wonder about that now. Fortunately their attacks are predictable and he can use the same few combinations of moves to defeat them. Redirect, get under their guard. The martial arts elective he took one semester is really paying off here. They hadn’t gotten into weapons but the idea was the same. The flares of light are soon joined by the clanging of a sword, and before Holster is done equipping his character the room is free of sand demons and the danger music fades. Shitty walks towards the platform wearing a burnished suit of armor with strange decals all over it that seem to be rabbit themed. His weapon is an incongruously delicate rapier. Bitty glitters in sea green chain mail made of overlapping dragon scales, and his weapon is a curved scimitar with a jeweled hilt. On his non-dominant hand is an innocuous seeming half-glove that Ransom knows is the source of the mage fire that was mowing down the demons. Lardo is sporting a roman style gladiator outfit complete with plumed helmet and a wicked looking spear.  
“You guys! How did you get here?” Ransom yells as Shitty tries to hug tackle him. This isn’t an actual move though, so Shitty just ends up walking into Ransom and pushing him back slightly.  
-You have to write on the bottom screen with your stylus, guys,- Holster explains to the others. He’d come back from the game store dressed like a cowboy from an old western, twin pistols and all. Ransom snorts. Of course Holster would pick weapons with holsters.  
-We had to hit up Johnson to borrow some of his games. He collects special edition color DSes and for some reason has multiple copies of this game. He said it was his job to conveniently patch up plot holes or something like that. We got to the haus and connected to the game as soon as we could, it was lucky we were almost there already.- Bitty explained.  
Ransom just accepted that. Questioning Johnson’s logic always ended in headaches and paranoia, so that mystery was best left alone. A frog had once tried to have a debate with Johnson and had been found crouching in a corner muttering about toadstools hours later.  
-Holster told us he found you in the game, but not how you got here; do you have any idea how this happened?- Shitty’s handwriting was surprisingly cute, the little hearts decorating the i’s.  
-Yeah, like what the actual fuck is going on here, guys,- Lardo added.  
“I beat the first of the two bosses, the green one. Before I could beat the purple one I ended up in here somehow. I may have skipped a lot of dialogue but I didn’t expect that would have any consequences,” Ransom explained. Seeing his friends but being unable to see their facial expressions was unnerving. Their game avatars looked like them but cycled through the same repetitive programmed motions.  
-I’m going online to find the cheats for this game,- Shitty declared, then vanished.  
-Have you been outside this room yet?- Bitty queried.  
“Not yet, I’ve been a bit preoccupied,” Ransom answered.  
-We should go look for this door that the dragonfly man, Drazaan talked about. Holster told us you only have three days,- Bitty wrote. His normally neat handwriting was slanted and cramped, and Ransom wondered if that meant he was worried. Holster wasn’t saying anything at all.  
-We’ll get you out of here, Rans.- Bitty wrote in deliberately neater letters.  
Ransom grunted out some form of agreement and walked towards the door of the boss room, and the other two followed. 

~

Holster felt like one of his arms was missing. Or like he was walking around with only one shoe. Everything was off balance, wrong. Ransom was stuck in a video game. Ransom could possibly be trapped in another world forever. Or worse, Ransom could be erased completely. Holster stared at the tiny figure on the screen, his heart beating faster and faster, his breath so loud it felt like it was tearing his throat. What could he do? What could he do? He jumped when Shitty lay a warm hand on his shoulder.  
“You should log off, get some rest. I looked up a bunch of things, I’ll go in and talk to him and keep him company.” Shitty squeezed Holster’s shoulder as he spoke uncharacteristically quietly. Shitty took the DS from Holster’s shaking hands and the character on the screen morphed into Shitty seamlessly.  
“Why were you and Bitty already equipped when you showed up in there?” Holster asked, trying to distract himself.  
“We both had been playing the game too before on and off; Johnson let us borrow it when we asked him what he was always doing up there. I beat the game actually, only took me like ten tries to kill the boss.” Shitty replied.  
“Which boss did you kill first?” Holster inquired.  
“The purple one.”

~

Holster was exhausted, but an exhilarated nervous energy kept him pacing in in his room. Their room. He was terrified, but one look at Ransom’s empty bunk and Holster knew he was going to do it. He was going to beat the game, kill the green one first, and join Ransom. Losing him was not an option. And perhaps that was what the verse had meant, when it said, What will they give to bring you home? Holster knew the answer to that already: Anything. 

~

Bitty, Lardo, and Shitty told a few of their other teammates about the situation and took turns accompanying Ransom all night. Jack died three times before they took him off Ransom duty. His character had been absurdly boring anyway. He’d gone with the classic shield and broadsword of course, and it really wasn’t a good fit with having to fight so many enemies at once. Ransom’d had a few close calls with hordes of fire demons and night mares, which were much more fearsome than the puny sand demons. Since Shitty and Bitty had actually played the game before, they made sure one of them was with him at all times, since they had no idea what would happen if Ransom died in game. Lardo was a surprisingly quick study, and fearsome with her spear. They found a lot of rooms Ransom hadn’t even entered before, and a hidden grotto filled with glowing crystals, but nothing that seemed to be a clue to getting out of the game.  
Holster’s absence was worrying for Ransom, to say the least. After pestering his teammates to check on him almost every hour the answer he got was always the same; his door was locked and the lights were out. Ransom hoped he was sleeping and not too upset. He knew that was unlikely though, considering the way he’d feel if their positions were reversed. Nothing looked that different to him than before he’d beaten the boss, and he hoped against hope every time he went through a doorway that this was the magical door that would send him home. So far no dice. He morbidly wondered how long his teammates would keep him company if it turned out he was stuck here forever. Holster was completely radio silent for the next two days. Ransom tried to not let it bother him but it was making it quietly insane. Had Holster given him up as lost? Was it too painful to see him like this, reduced to pixels and type on a screen?  
Ransom and Bitty were fighting a rare glass demon (Those only occur when a sand demon and a fire demon are killed on the same spot within a certain period of time, or when summoned by a boss) when the boss fight music started playing. Ransom was so distracted that an errant blow from the demon almost took his head off.  
-Honey, you need to be careful,- Bitty reprimanded. Ransom had been starting to learn what writing looked like with different emotions and Bitty’s words looked shaky and scared.  
“I’m sorry Bits,” Ransom said sheepishly as they finished off the demon. They hurried back to the boss room without another word, knowing that the music playing could be important. 

~

Holster’s plan wasn’t very refined, but he wasn’t completely going in blind. He’d read as many cheats as possible to finish the game quickly, as well as information about an interesting side quest that won him his own night mare (A friesian horse with the mouth of a dog) which he thought might be useful. He’d played for two days straight, only sleeping for an hour at a time when his eyes could not stay open any longer. He’d racked up tons of gold and as many high powered weapons as he could carry, and only switched his game over to party mode once he was already in the boss chamber. He didn’t want to end up trapped in a completely different pocket universe from Ransom, after all. That would be much too greek tragedy. The earlier incarnation of the boss had been a giant green and purple sphinx, and it had solemnly recited to him, 

Do this once and you may not come back  
Flee from here and your soul will crack  
It takes true love to bring you back

Holster made sure to read all the dialogue, and he’d never seen this iteration in any of the playthroughs he’d watched. The sphinx lashed out with its tail and flapped its wings to batter him about with the wind. The night mare treated the gale as if it didn’t exist and tore out the sphinx’s throat in a surprisingly graphic fashion. The sphinx shimmered and burst into green and purple flames, turning into the dragonfly men. They swirled around the top of the room, spitting poison and throwing spells and calling up sand demons to harry him. The night mare was surprisingly useful, picking off sand demons for him and letting him focus on the green dragonfly man. Holster had to make sure the Drazaan didn’t kill him, and that he didn’t kill it first by accident. This was difficult, as Drazaan was more likely to attack close range, and the green one was hanging back and throwing spells.  
Holster finally had to mount the night mare and charge Drazaan, startling it into veering off before changing directions and galloping towards the green dragonfly man. Holster launched himself off the night mare’s back towards the green dragonfly man, guns blazing, and threw a stunning spell directly into its eyes. The night mare held off the Drazaan until Holster killed the green one hastily, hoping that the night mare wouldn’t finish Drazaan off first. Drazaan man swirled into sparks and became that same chest in the center of the room, just as Ransom and Bitty burst into the room, and Holster’s bunk bed started to fade around him. 

~

“YOU FUCKING IDIOT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHY WOULD YOU …” Ransom trails off into spluttering incoherently. Bitty’s character disappears and Holster knows Bitty has probably dropped the game in a rush to go see if Holster is really gone.  
“I didn’t want to be in a world without you, you moron,” Holster shoots back, and Ransom tries and fails to stay angry. Ransom aggressively walks against Holster, the closest he can get to a hug here.  
“You’re still an idiot,” Ransom mutters.  
“I know,” Holster replies. “But don’t tell me you would have done anything differently,” he adds, practically daring Ransom to contradict him. The night mare, oblivious, noses at Holster’s sleeve affectionately.  
“How come she gets to do that,” Ransom grumbles. He really just needs a hug.  
The game music changes in the background while neither of them are paying much attention, and only an urgent whinny from the night mare snaps them out of their moment. Drazaan coalesces from the purple fires in the lamps around the chest. 

A sacrifice has been made  
Willingly given and unbade  
A single chance for which you’ve paid  
To win free from being unmade

The words appear written in fire on the sand. Glass demons erupt from the fire as the words burn, and Holster draws his pistols to provide cover fire as Ransom readies spells for the attack of Drazaan. The night mare rips heads off of as many demons as it can, and the dragonfly man swoops towards Holster. Holster doesn’t turn; he knows Ransom has his back. Drazaan retreats with a howl as he’s hit with a blast from a fire spell, and the last of the glass demons are shattered. It calls up sand demons, fire demons, and more glass demons, but Ransom’s twin blades and Holster’s twin pistols are unstoppable. The dragonfly man is finally vanquished when Ransom severs its head from upon the night mare, as Holster barrages it with bullets. The world dissolves into a shimmer of sparks as the victory music plays. 

~

Holster opens his eyes crammed into a bunk bed, Ransom half on top of him, his head firmly buried in the crook of Holster’s neck.  
“Never do anything like that again, bro, I’m not worth it, I’m not, I’m...” Ransom’s laugh sounds almost like a sob, “You absolute fucker.” He breathes deeply, and Holster doesn’t say anything, he just wraps his arms around Ransom to pull him as close as humanly possible and breathes in Ransom’s scent. Holster never wants to move again.  
“You’re worth it.” Holster finally says. Bitty, standing in the hallway looking in, closes the door as softly as he can and slinks away. 

They all still play the game sometimes, to visit the night mare. They’ve named her Sherry. 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the game stuff was inspired by Ocarina of Time's Desert Temple because I haven't played video games much since N64. The original idea was a dream that needed an ending. I dreamed that Ransom was trapped in a video game and the members of the Haus had to play the game to keep him company, but I woke up before I found out if he ever got back safely! I couldn't leave him like that!


End file.
